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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

A warm welcome to ICL

The Indian Cricket League, a desi version of Kerry Packer’s tremendously successful World Series Championships, is the brainchild of Subhash Chandra of the Zee Group. It is designed as a series of tournaments in India with a mix of domestic and foreign players. It is expected to kick-off in November-December with Twenty20 tournament.
I am very happy that we got a new cricket authority parallel to BCCI, who are going to start first professional cricket league in India. Indian Cricket League unveils its cricketers yesterday, which includes many promising young cricketers.
Kapil Dev, the Chairman of Indian Cricket League (ICL) ckaimed that India’s most promising players are part of ICL, however I do feel its not Indian, rather ICL got best Pak Cricketers, Imran Farhat , Inzamam-Ul-Haq , Mohammad Yousuf , Abdul Razzaq. PCB is now in danger and they threatened their players that they will not be picked up in National squad. Some international big shots like Brian Lara, Lance Klusener have already made contract and many more are going to join soon.

This is mainly a business driven approach and will be functioning in city format. They have a big plan ahead and planning to make a new Indian Team in future, may organize some World Cup even. If they manage the show well, ICC may also recognise it and then ICL will be a part of existing international cricketing arena.

I am not discussing the vested monitory interests for Subhash Chandra and Zee group, but feeling exited as this is the first professional approach in our country, where cricket is a religion. BCCI for long 75 years has done nothing for it, no basic infrastructure, no improvement on the quality of game. The so called team India (rather we should say Team BCCI, as BCCI is a private governing body and not a part of Govt of India) is performing poorly recent times. We need to have an infrastructure where more and more cricketers can play, can make career, can earn money. I always thought that in a country of 1.2 Billion people we should have more opportunity for good cricket. I thought of promoting zonal cricket in a professional way(so that it also merge with the international cricket). But BCCI has done nothing like that. In avg one International match in Eden Garden per year is not enough; people never get tickets though they are ready to pay. It’s the so called monopoly of BCCI, which is why Indian cricket has suffered a lot.

Keeping all these factors in mind, I should say it is a great move by Zee, and it will foster the game, cricketers and entertain viewers. So ICL heartiest welcome from my side.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am also interested in this new effort by the zee group. They are pumping in a lot of money and has really taken away the sleep of BCCI. Yesterday I was seeing the BCCI is also now taking preventive measured to stop domestic players being shoved away. After 25 years the earnings of domestic players are now being increased after the push by zee....But its a nice effor & lets see what happens!

Pijush said...

@Kalyan, Thanks again. Yesterday ICL filed case agaist BCCI against banning and punishing cricketers and most importantly Why their team can be called TEAM India? So, now the war is open. Meanwhile BCCI is taking some initiatives to start new International League. As long as its good for the game its alright, but too much controversies/conflicts can spoil the environment as well. Like what happened last time with More/Chappel/Ganguly/David etc. After all its peoples game and people’s interest should not be hampered.

Raghu Ram Prasad said...

Good decision taken by the ICL ....Now it is tough competation between BCCI & ICL. Kapil dev is smart to pull on ICL.